The transformation of a given
status is not, of course, the business of philosophy. The philosopher can only
participate in social struggles insofar as he is not a professional philosopher.
This "division of labor," too, results from the modern separation
of the mental from the material means of production, and philosophy cannot overcome
it. The abstract character of philosophical work in the past and present is
rooted in the social conditions of existence. Adhering to the abstractness of
philosophy is more appropriate to circumstances and closer to truth than is
the pseudophilosophical concretenessthat condescends to social struggles.
What is true in philosophical concepts was arrived at by abstracting from the
concrete status of man and is true only in such abstraction. Reason, mind, morality,
knowledge, and happiness are not only categories of bourgeois philosophy, but
concerns of mankind. As such they must be preserved, if not derived anew. When
critical theory examines the philosophical doctrines in which it was still possible
to speak of man, it deals first with the camouflage and misinterpretation that
characterized the discussion of man in the bourgeois period.

With this intention, several
fundamental concepts of philosophy have been discussed in this journal [Zeitschrift
für Sozialforschung]: truth and verification, rationalism and irrationalism,
the role of logic, metaphysics and positivism, and the concept of essence. These
were not merely analyzed sociologically, in order to correlate philosophical
dogmas with social loci. Nor were specific philosophical contents "resolved"
into social facts. To the extent that philosophy is more than ideology, every
such attempt must come to nought. When critical theory comes to terms with philosophy,
it is interested in the truth content of philosophical concepts and problems.
It presupposes that they really contain truth. The enterprise of the sociology
of knowledge, to the contrary, is occupied only with the untruths, not the truths
of previous philosophy. To be sure, even the highest philosophical categories
are connected with social facts, even if only with the most general fact that
the struggle of man with nature has not been undertaken by mankind as a free
subject but instead has taken place only in class society. This fact comes to
expression in many "ontological differences" established by philosophy.
Its traces can perhaps be found even in the very forms of conceptual thought:
for example, in the determination of logic as essentially the logic of predication,
or judgments about given objects of which predicates are variously asserted
or denied. It was dialectical logic that first pointed out the shortcomings
of this interpretation of judgment: the "contingency" of predication
and the "externality" of the process of judgment, which let the subject
of judgment appear "outside" as self‑subsistent and the predicate
"inside" as though in our heads. Moreover, it is certainly true that
many philosophical concepts are mere "foggy ideas" arising out of
the domination of existence by an uncontrolled economy and, accordingly, are
to be explained precisely by the material conditions of life.

But in its historical forms
philosophy also contains insights into human and objective conditions whose
truth points beyond previous society and thus cannot be completely reduced to
it. Here belong not only the contents dealt with under such concepts as reason,
mind, freedom, morality, universality, and essence, but also important achievements
of epistemology, psychology, and logic. Their truth content, which surmounts
their social conditioning, presupposes not an eternal consciousness that transcendentally
constitutes the individual conscious ness of historical subjects but only those
particular historical subjects whose consciousness expresses itself in critical
theory. It is only with and for this consciousness that the "surpassing"
content becomes visible in its real truth. The truth that it recognizes in philosophy
is not reducible to existing social conditions. This would be the case only
in a form of existence where consciousness is no longer separated from being,
enabling the rationality of thought to proceed from the rationality of social
existence. Until then truth that is more than the truth of what is can be attained
and intended only in opposition to established social relations. To this negative
condition, at least, it is subject.

In the past, social relations
concealed the meaning of truth. They formed a horizon of untruth that deprived
the truth of its meaning. An example is the concept of universal consciousness,
which preoccupied German Idealism. It contains the problem of the relation of
the subject to the totality of society: How can universality as community (Allgemeinheit),
become the subject without abolishing individuality? The understanding that
more than an epistemological or metaphysical problem is at issue here can be
gained and evaluated only outside the limits of bourgeois thought. The philosophical
solutions met with by the problem are to be found in the history of philosophy.
No sociological analysis is necessary in order to understand Kant's theory of
transcendental synthesis. It embodies an epistemological truth. The interpretation
given to the Kantian position by critical theory does not affect the internal
philosophical difficulty. By connecting the problem of the universality of knowledge
with that of society as a universal subject, it does not purport to provide
a better philosophical solution. Critical theory means to show only the specific
social conditions at the root of philosophy's inability to pose the problem
in a more comprehensive way, and to indicate that any other solution lay beyond
that philosophy's boundaries. The untruth inherent in all transcendental treatment
of the problem thus comes into philosophy "from outside"; hence it
can be overcome only outside philosophy. "Outside" does not mean that
social factors affect consciousness from without as though the latter existed
independently. It refers rather to a division within the social whole. Consciousness
is "externally" conditioned by social existence to the very extent
that in bourgeois society the social conditions of the individual are external
to him and, as it were, overwhelm him from without. This externality made possible
the abstract freedom of the thinking subject. Consequently, only its abolition
would enable abstract freedom to disappear as part of the general transformation
of the relationship between social being and consciousness.

If the theory's fundamental
conception of the relation of social existence to consciousness is to be followed,
this "outside" must be taken into consideration. In previous history
there has been no pre‑established harmony between correct thought and
social being. In the bourgeois period, economic conditions determine philosophical
thought insofar as it is the emancipated, self‑reliant individual who
thinks. In reality, he counts not in the concretion of his potentialities and
needs but only in abstraction from his individuality, as the bearer of labor
power, i.e. of useful functions in the process of the realization of capital.
Correspondingly, he appears in philosophy only as an abstract subject, abstracted
from his full humanity. If he pursues the idea of man, he must think in opposition
to facticity. Wishing to conceive this idea in its philosophical purity and
universality, he must abstract from the present state of affairs. This abstractness,
this radical withdrawal from the given, at least clears a path along which the
individual in bourgeois society can seek the truth and adhere to what is known.
Beside concreteness and facticity, the thinking subject also leaves its misery
"outside." But it cannot escape from itself, for it has incorporated
the monadic isolation of the bourgeois individual into its premises. The subject
thinks within a horizon of untruth that bars the door to real emancipation.

This horizon explains some
of the characteristic features of bourgeois philosophy. One of them affects
the idea of truth itself and would seem to relativize "sociologically"
all its truths from the start: the coupling of truth and certainty. As such,
this connection goes all the way back to ancient philosophy. But only in the
modern period has it taken on the typical form that truth must prove itself
as the guaranteed property of the individual, and that this proof is considered
established only if the individual can continually reproduce the truth as his
own achievement. The process of knowledge is never terminated, because in every
act of cognition the individual must once again re‑enact the "production
of the world" and the categorical organization of experience. However,
the process never gets any further because the restriction of "productive"
cognition to the transcendental sphere makes any new form of the world impossible.
The constitution of the world occurs behind the backs of the individuals; yet
it is their work.

The corresponding social factors
are clear. The progressive aspects of this construction of the world, namely
the foundation of knowledge on the autonomy of the individual and the idea of
cognition as an act and task to be continually re‑enacted, are made ineffective
by the life process of bourgeois society. But does this sociological limitation
affect the true content of the construction, the essential connection of knowledge,
freedom, and practice? Bourgeois society's domination reveals itself not only
in the dependence of thought but also in the (abstract) independence of its
contents. For this society determines consciousness such that the latter's activity
and contents survive in the dimension of abstract reason; abstractness saves
its truth. What is true is so only to the extent that it is not the truth about
social reality. And just because it is not the latter, because it transcends
this reality, it can become a matter for critical theory. Sociology that is
interested only in the dependent and limited nature of consciousness has nothing
to do with truth. Its research, useful in many ways, falsifies the interest
and the goal of critical theory. In any case, what was linked, in past knowledge,
to specific social structures disappears with them. In contrast, critical theory
concerns itself with preventing the loss of the truths which past knowledge
labored to attain.

This is not to assert the existence
of eternal truths unfolding in changing historical forms of which they need
only to be divested in order for their kernel of truth to be revealed. If reason,
freedom, knowledge, and happiness really are transformed from abstract concepts
into reality, then they will have as much and as little in common with their
previous forms as the association of free men with competitive, commodity‑producing
society. Of course, to the identity of the basic social structure in previous
history certainly corresponds an identity of certain universal truths, whose
universal character is an essential component of their truth content. The struggle
of authoritarian ideology against abstract universals has clearly exhibited
this. That man is a rational being, that this being requires freedom, and that
happiness is his highest good are all universal propositions whose progressive
impetus derives precisely from their universality. Universality gives them an
almost revolutionary character, for they claim that all, and not merely this
or that particular person, should be rational, free, and happy. In a society
whose reality gives the lie to all these universals, philosophy cannot make
them concrete. Under such conditions, adherence to universality is more important
than its philosophical destruction.

Critical theory's interest in
the liberation of mankind binds it to certain ancient truths. It is at one with
philosophy in maintaining that man can be more than a manipulable subject in
the production process of class society. To the extent that philosophy has nevertheless
made its peace with man's determination by economic conditions, it has allied
itself with repression. That is the bad materialism that underlies the edifice
of idealism: the consolation that in the material world everything is in order
as it is. (Even when it has not been the personal conviction of the philosopher,
this consolation has arisen almost automatically as part of the mode of thought
of bourgeois idealism and constitutes its ultimate affinity with its time.)
The other premise of this materialism is that the mind is not to make its demands
in this world, but is to orient itself toward another realm that does not conflict
with the material world. The materialism of bourgeois practice can quite easily
come to terms with this attitude. The bad materialism of philosophy is overcome
in the materialist theory of society. The latter opposes not only the production
relations that gave rise to bad materialism, but every form of production that
dominates man instead of being dominated by him: this idealism underlies its
materialism. Its constructive concepts, too, have a residue of abstractness
as long as the reality toward which they are directed is not yet given. Here,
however, abstractness results not from avoiding the status quo, but from orientation
toward the future status of man. It cannot be supplanted by another, correct
theory of the established order (as idealist abstractness was replaced by the
critique of political economy). It cannot be succeeded by a new theory, but
only by rational reality itself. The abyss between rational and present reality
cannot be bridged by conceptual thought. In order to retain what is not yet
present as a goal in the present, phantasy is required.